WebView: A Graphical Aid for Revisiting Web Pages

Abstract

Current commercial web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer provide a wide and diverse range of utilities, such as history lists and bookmarks, that support revisiting previously seen pages on the web. Yet previous research indicates that these utilities are largely unused. In this paper, we present an alternative utility called WebView; a prototype designed to improve the efficiency and usability of page revisitation. It does this by paying particular attention to how previous pages are represented visually, and by integrating many revisitation capabilities into a single display space. Our preliminary evaluation of WebView indicates that users are enthusiastic about the functionality provided, and that it improves the efficiency of some navigational acts.